Phonetics Study

[dth1112]

I'm looking to learn more about American English's phonetics with the goal to understand the language's speech mechanism and thus achieve a native accent. Could everyone give me some suggestions and resources? Thank you so much!

[PROESL]

Originally Posted by dth1112

I'm looking to learn more about American English's phonetics with the goal to understand the language's speech mechanism and thus achieve a native accent. Could everyone give me some suggestions and resources? Thank you so much!

I would find a teacher to help you by working with the following:

intonation
linking - connecting sounds
schwa vowel sound
function words as opposed to content words
time-stress
intonation patterns for individual words
intonation patterns for phrases and sentences
thought groups
emphatic stress
contrastive stress
new information stress
list stress

And, of course, there are individual sounds of letters. Each student is different. However, there are some things in this area that students have in common, especially if we are talking about students whose first language is the same. Oftentimes, the focus is on minimal pairs when dealing with individual sounds, though it need not always be.

In addition to the points I've listed, learning to move one's lips and mouth to form the sounds of English better is another area in which to focus. But, as I said, each student is different, and not everyone will need to focus on this.

With some students, merely speaking a little louder contributes to improvement in their pronunciation.

Please, post any follow-up questions you might have.

[PROESL]

Originally Posted by dth1112

I'm looking to learn more about American English's phonetics with the goal to understand the language's speech mechanism and thus achieve a native accent. Could everyone give me some suggestions and resources? Thank you so much!

I forgot to mention using reductions such as gonna, wanna, hafta, and coujiya.

There's also t and d deletion: I need to test these again. I nee' t' test these again.